Silently Breaking
by Rue-the-Ravenclaw
Summary: My version of how Newt got his limp. Oneshot. T for safety


Newt couldn't remember ever being happy.

Sure, he'd found some things that made him smile, he'd laughed at Minho's sarcasm and Frypan's dodgy jokes in his first days in the glade, but he couldn't remember being properly, truly happy. Most people didn't realise this. Because Newt was always kind and was just such a likeable person, everyone assumed that he was happy. No one ever asked if anything was wrong, ever decided to get to know the real Newt. We often ignore the things that are silently breaking, instead pretending that everything is fine.

The porcelain doll covered in cracks, only moments away from shattering.

The boat in the distance that's slowly going under.

The book slowly burning, dotted with flames but still salvageable.

The British boy who was trying to hide from everyone how he hated every single second of every day in the glade, how he was barely holding on.

Newt didn't understand how everybody could go about like their lives were perfect when every day the runners went out to find an exit and came back with no new information, or worse, with a corpse for the baggers. Newt didn't understand how everyone could act like everything was okay when they woke up with no memories in some kind of massive prison, with monsters that came out at night and no escape. Who were these people, this WICKED, that kept them trapped here like some kind of experiment?

Newt thought about this all the time. He wondered why the runners carried on looking for an exit when nothing had been found in the time they'd been searching. He wondered why no one realised that the new cuts and bruises he came back with after his day as a runner weren't from tripping in the maze.

He wondered why he didn't just end it all.

The first time he'd thought about suicide, it had shocked him. It seemed so horrible, so dismal, so _final._ He'd pushed the thought away, though it stayed in the back of his mind, always there, lurking as a reminder of the emptiness he felt.

Since then, he's thought about it a lot. Every day just seemed to make him even more miserable. Every day, Newt was made more and more certain that there was no escape, that the people who kept them trapped never built one. This thought was only made stronger when people tried escaping in other ways, only to be brutally killed in the process.

Newt had been in the glade for a year and a half when everything got too much. It was nothing particularly major, not after the things he saw in the maze, but it was enough. It doesn't take much when the person is already so close to the edge.

The youngest glader was thirteen years old, always smiling, always hopeful. He had been the reason Newt held on so long, giving him a tiny glimmer of hope that things would someday be all right. And then, when the little boy said he'd found an escape, he was killed in his sleep. And it was then that Newt lost his last, tiny sliver of hope.

Newt decided that without hope and happiness, life just wasn't worth living. He didn't have anything to live for.

He planned it all out very carefully. No point in someone finding him and trying to stop him, especially when they'd never tried to help him before. He'd camped out at the doors of the maze the night before and slipped in as soon as the doors started to open. From there he'd sprinted off as fast as he could into the depths of the maze. He went as he could without stopping, before starting to climb up one of the walls. _I'm far enough in,_ he thought. _No one's going to come along until it's too late._

Newt started to climb up the vines on the wall. They only went halfway, so at the top of the vines Newt stopped and turned himself round to face the opposite wall. The sun was just rising over the other wall, streaking the sky with deep orange and gold. This was the final thing Newt saw as he finally decided to end it all.

Because we ignore the things that are breaking when we could help them, and don't realise they ever were until it's too late.

The porcelain doll shatters into a million tiny pieces.

The boat sinks without a trace.

The book burns to a pile of ashes.

And Newt let go.

 **Do you think I should continue this or leave it as a oneshot?**


End file.
